Formula One news

BMW happy with Friday practice

The weather conditions for the first day of practice in Suzuka for the Japanese Grand Prix started with heavy rain and ended with a drying track and sunshine. BMW test and reserve driver, Sebastian Vettel, was able to run the car in many different conditions and after completing 50 laps, the most of any driver today, was sixth fastest overall. Meanwhile his team-mates, Robert Kubica and Nick Heidfeld, did very little running in the changing conditions. 

"The track is very challenging and difficult but nice," said Kubica. "We have only done three laps on grooved tyres, so we need to do a bit more running as the conditions were not good. Also I spent these laps watching where to go and which lines to take."

Nick Heidfeld commented, "I almost didn't drive today, and in the first session in the morning only did one installation lap. In the second session in the afternoon I went out right at the end, basically to make sure all the systems were working. At the very end when everyone was on dry tyres obviously there was a lot of traffic, therefore, I didn't manage to set a good lap time."

Team boss Mario Theissen added, "The focus of today's free practice was on the weather, and so over the two sessions we tested all available types of tyres. In the morning Sebastian used extreme wets first, and then intermediates because the conditions were changing during the hour. In the afternoon right up to ten minutes before the end of the session intermediates were used, and then everyone took dry tyres. Sebastian did a 19 lap run on intermediates, while in the morning Robert and Nick did just an installation lap each on these tyres. In the second free practice the two race drivers only went out with dry tyres. All three cars ran with no problems."

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